Featured Help identifying this strange item...

Hi - Does anyone have any idea what this could be please?
I'm not sure if it is in fact Jewelry (in some ways it looks like it may have been functional... but then, it is also rather ornate). Front looks like amber-colored glass with engraved flower (tulip, rose, thistle??)... Back looks like blue ceramic with white markings...
Just dug it up in New Zealand at a site with links to British settlers from ca. 1850 onwards... No idea what it is. Many thanks.

 

Does that back say MINT... ? I suspect Minton. Some sort of little finial or knop. Not a tuilp, let me wake my botany brain cell up.

 

Maybe a Thistle I think.

 

Not with those leaves.

 

Pomegranate blossom?

 

The centre looks like enamel on copper to me, the distinctive blue colour is typical on contra enamelling that has to be used on any enamel on thin metal to prevent cracking.
Posting a detail picture with the same size but all the hand cropped out would help.

 

It looks more like it says "wint" if you zoom in. And it looks to have the number 43 above it.

 

There is a Facebook page called London Mudlarks. They walk the foreshore and pick up stuff from Roman times to modern times. Find their page and ask them. They do take images from other people's finds and they are really good at identifying stuff like this.

 

Hi All - Thanks a lot for your initial thoughts. Several days of googling have turned up nothing... (but I have yet to contact the mudlarks...)

I do have a couple of up-dates on the item for anyone who's interested:
Please see the new photo: Item is cleaned up a little, but it is very hard to get a clear picture of the tiny details.
The blue piece dislodged from the back during (gentle) cleaning, and the missing broken shards were found inside the central chamber... This turns out to be blue glass and not enamel (I think). The inscription on it is very hard to make out, and even looks like it could be a mirror image... (see the second picture, which is a drawing of what I think could possibly be on the blue glass...) - there is almost certainly a square and compass straddling two lines of characters... It could say 43 MINT or 43 WYHT or it could be _EEP __THYN in reverse - I just can't tell.
The object is probably copper and glass... it is not magnetic.
Each of the six little 'arms' has a hole going right through into the central chamber... These look threaded at first glance, but I am now not convinced they are threaded.
Still very much stumped!
Any ideas??

 

I agree, Dave. It certainly looks like the Freemasonary's Square & Compass(es) symbol though the square isn't in quite the right position of the usual symbol. It doesn't have the "G" in the middle either. Nowww some masonic jurisdictions omit the "G." On zooming in and focusing, the lettering looks like:

--EP
---TAIN or ---THIN

The letters on the left are too damaged to read. The 2nd word I guess could be captain??? It may be a specific lodge name, a specific office, a degree of that lodge, or a location? Am including an edited version that isn't much different or better than Dave's.

 

Aha. In which case, that's a forget me not bud. Fascinating.

 

Hi,
Looks like a thistle perhaps a Scottish rite?
greg

 

Now that is interesting if this is really Masonic related and that is a forget-me-not. Forget-me-nots and Masonery has quite a German history. After the Nazis came to power in Germany, Masonic stuff were frown on by the Nazis. Involved in Masonic activities could get you jailed and possibly sent to a concentration camp. The use of Masonic emblems was stopped. The forget-me-not flower (not the bud) became a symbol between Masons.

Nowwww forget-me-nots (the flower not as a bud) had been a symbol in Germany since the 1920s as a "symbol used by most charitable organizations in Germany, with a very clear meaning: 'Do not forget the poor and the destitute'."

http://www.masonicnetwork.org/blog/2009/the-story-behind-forget-me-not-emblem/

https://sites.google.com/site/lodge...general/the-forget-me-not-and-masonic-slipper

As this is a bud rather than the full 5 petal blue flower I doubt it has a German connection, but it is interesting that the Square and Compass is on blue, the same shade blue as that of the German Blue forget-me-nots.

--- Susan

 

Perhaps the compass is not masonic?

Yesterday two inhabitants of the parish of St. Mary Abchurch, made application to Mr. Alderman Wooldridge, at Guildhall for a warrant against the keeper of an infamous house, agreeable to the particular directions of the act of parliament; a warrant was granted, and Mr. Payne the constable immediately went to execute it; he presently came with the prisoner, a woman so big with child that she was on the eve of delivery; with her a pretty young woman, who, it afterwards turned out, was a nymph of the house.

Being closely interrogated by the alderman about her situation, she burst into a flood of tears, and a scene ensued that was extremely affecting: she said that she had lived in many reputable families, which she named, till being debauched by an attorney’s clerk, by whom she was with child, she was compelled to leave service and go to her father; but her mother-in-law [i.e., stepmother] turning her out of doors, she had no other resource to fly to than seeking that dissolute way of life which she now followed: every person present felt for the unfortunate girl, though nobody so much as herself, for her story was accompanied with the most evident emotions of contrition.

The alderman, in very severe terms, reprehended the keeper of the brothel, for to such characters, he justly observed, girls in general owed their ruin; but as the prisoner’s situation made her a very unfit object for a jail, she was permitted to return home, on a promise to discontinue the practice for which she was apprehended.

The young woman was sent by a constable to her father, who is a man of reputation; and we trust he will exercise tenderness, and not severity to a girl who appears to be more unfortunate than abandoned.

http://nationalheritagemuseum.typep...-within-compass-or-a-tempest-on-a-teapot.html

 

Thanks davey. Not a forget me not, the leaves are wrong. Closest is some kind of wild rose, maybe rugosa.

 

Hi again,
Thank you all! This is a major breakthrough. I had a feeling that this may in fact not be masonic (although that is a fascinating scenario)... I also think the flower does not look much like a forget-me-not...
But "KEEP WITHIN" as in "keep within compass" certainly seems to fit. The fact that this is engraved as a mirror image could suggest this is a kind of seal (e.g. for wax...)?? Although the letters are so very small...
I still find the overall shape and composition of the item quite puzzling, and wonder what kind of flower it is... I think this item most likely came from England or Scotland...
I'll keep digging around and googling, but thanks so much for all your ideas and advice!